by Liv Rancourt
“You remember Ryan, don’t you?”
“Of course.” Uncle Jonathan handed Ryan a mug and dropped into a chair, the cushion’s whoosh echoing his sigh. “Much better.” He took a sip from his mug, leaving a dab of whipped cream on the end of his nose. “But I thought you two weren’t dating.”
Ryan’s chuckle vibrated against her upper arm, and Danielle’s cheeks warmed up. As a distraction, she slurped enough whipped cream to find the drink underneath. Cool. Keep your cool. “We weren’t before. We are now.”
“Look how cute they are, Robert,” Uncle Jonathan said.
His partner came through the door with his own mug. “Don’t tease them, Jon,” Robert said, perching on the arm of Jonathan’s chair, his big black eyes and round cheeks making him resemble an intelligent squirrel. They’d been together for something like twenty years. “I know you won’t get tired of the hot chocolate, Dani, but if anyone wants to switch to mimosas, just let me know.”
“A mimosa sounds good,” Ryan said.
Danielle tucked her nose back into her mug. Ryan seemed awful interested in making a good impression, as if two gay men weren’t going to appreciate his confident smile and direct gaze. And his shoulders. Duh.
She sucked up the chocolate faster than she probably should have. Another mug or two and she could even handle the phone call Uncle Jonathan had threatened her with, though it would probably be better to get her other agenda item taken care of first. “So … the house.”
He raised his glass in toast. “To Mother’s house.”
Ryan and Robert raised their mugs.
“I’m just pleased you’re taking care of things.” Jonathan bent forward, resting his elbows on his knees, enough lawyer shading his gaze to put Danielle on her guard. She mirrored his posture, Ryan’s hand resting on the small of her back.
“We’re pretty much on schedule to get it on the market in the beginning of February,” Danielle said.
“February?” Ryan asked, with just a touch too much surprise.
Danielle glanced at him. “Do you think we’ll need more time?”
He waited a beat too long to answer. “No, I just—”
“What about some mimosas?” Robert hopped off the arm of Jonathan’s chair. “Ryan, could you come give me a hand?”
Ryan and Robert headed out into the kitchen. Danielle took another hit of cocoa and gave her priorities a quick shuffle. She needed her uncle on board before she talked with her mother, but she needed Ryan more than either of the other two.
The fire gave an exceptionally loud pop. She twitched, slopping whipped cream down the side of her mug. “I’m going to try this again.” The direct route would be the fastest way back to Ryan. “About the house.”
“What?”
“It needs a new roof, and we’ll get a better asking price if we do the work before putting it on the market.” Danielle tried to relax against the loveseat. Now it was her turn to wait. She couldn’t read her uncle’s expression. His affable smile hadn’t changed though a tiny note of tension began to hum.
“I guess you don’t want to pay for a roof.”
“My savings is pretty much tapped.” She kept her tone casual, like she asked people to pick up a $25,000 bill every day.
“You know your mother is the executor of the will. Just ask her to cover the cost when you talk to her today.” He raised his mug, toasting his own cleverness.
Of course that’s what he’d say. “You know she’ll say no, just because it’s me asking. But if you ask her, it’ll help my case.”
“Hmm.” Her uncle paused to take a sip of cocoa, his face a mask of lawyerly concentration.
Danielle did her best to stifle a grin. The longer he made her sweat, the more likely he was to agree. His refusals usually came swift and hard. After another few seconds, she decided to try to loosen him up. “Why is she always so nasty, anyway?”
Her uncle shifted, shrugged. “Maybe she doesn’t want you to sell the house. Maybe she was hoping you’d stay here and live in it.” He gave her a smile that was three quarters apology. “I’m sure that young man wouldn’t mind if you stayed.”
“What? Why?” Her family wasn’t playing fair. “My job’s in L.A. My life’s in L.A. I’ve got a ticket for a flight home on February 2nd.”
“February 2nd?”
Danielle jerked around. Ryan stood in the doorway holding a glass of champagne. His tone was mild but strained, as if anger and surprise almost overwhelmed his need to make a good impression.
Uncle Jonathan jumped out of the chair, his composure replaced by a boisterous grin. “I think I’ll go help Robert in the kitchen.”
“Wait, Uncle Jonathan,” Danielle said, twisting around to follow her uncle’s retreat, ready for one last shot before her ship completely sank. “If I ask her about the roof, will you talk her into it if she says no?”
Her uncle gave Ryan a pointed glance on his way through the door. “Oh, sweetie, you’ve got other stuff to deal with right now.”
Ryan took a careful sip of champagne. “I guess I didn’t realize you actually had a ticket.”
Danielle blinked a couple times, wondering how she’d been so completely clueless. “I’m sorry.”
He met her gaze for a brief moment, then looked away.
She scraped at a loose strand of hair. An absurd mix of frustration, sadness, and humor weighed her down. “You knew I was leaving.”
“Can’t fault me for hoping.”
His half-assed smile squashed the humor, leaving her with the perfect recipe for tears. She went to him, running her hands up his arms to lay her palms on his face. “Let’s just enjoy what we’ve got, okay?”
He closed his eyes, then wrapped her in a hug. “Sure.”
Her words had an undercurrent of desperation, but it matched the fierceness of his arms around her shoulders.
The shock of hearing Dani say she’d bought a plane ticket pretty much destroyed Ryan’s appetite. He kept his arms around her until Jonathan called them to the dining room, because it was easier than figuring out what to say.
She didn’t seem interested in letting go of him, either.
Her uncle called them a second time, and Ryan tugged gently on her ponytail. “Would have been easier to just stay in bed.”
Dani gave him the briefest smile and tipped her head to rest her forehead against his chest. “Yeah.”
“For the record, I knew you were leaving, but it surprised me to hear you’d bought a ticket,” Ryan said.
She took a step back, her expression hardening into something artificial. “I guess I should have mentioned it.”
“I guess.” Ryan matched her cool smile with one of his own. He made a show of offering her his elbow and escorted her down the hall to the dining room. They sat down to platters of bacon, poached eggs on toasted brioche, and individual corn soufflés. Fortunately there was more fresh squeezed orange juice and an open bottle of champagne.
He could have used something stronger, but another mimosa was better than nothing.
Dani’s uncle kept the conversation going with a bunch of questions about the house project, and her silence forced Ryan to talk. Somewhere between his second helping and third mimosa, a realization slid into place.
For ten years with Cherry, he’d put up with limitless shit.
No more.
He liked Dani a lot, but that didn’t give her an open pass. Her reluctance to be up front about their relationship had turned Christmas Eve into a disaster and New Year’s Eve into a shitstorm. Even little surprises, like “oh, I already bought my plane ticket home” stung.
Baseball only gave each batter three strikes.
She was at two and counting.
He took a long swallow of orange juice, a bleak sense of freedom helping him relax. Robert asked him where he worked out, and he made a joke about Gold’s Gym. The whole table relaxed after that, and Dani even reached over and squeezed his thigh, her hand about two inches higher than was polite.
On the way back to Perkins Lane, he stopped at Magnolia Park so they could watch the tide go out. This time when her hand landed on his thigh, he dragged it up toward his bullseye, and she did a sweet job of distracting him when he didn’t want to think.
Chapter Seventeen
Tuesday morning they both got up early; Ryan had to go to work at his day job, and Danielle wanted to deal with the stack of increasingly hysterical emails from her boss, Sharon. The telephone conversation with her mother had gone about like Danielle figured it would. Mom was pissy, Danielle was cranky, and Uncle Jonathan finally had to step in and talk them both down. Her mother did agree to shift funds around to pay for the roof, relieving Danielle of that particular worry.
Though that emotion couldn’t compare with the happy free-fall she’d felt when Ryan finally smiled at her again.
The coffee pot rumbled and the shower squawked overhead. Danielle opened email after email from her boss, who wanted to know whether she’d finished several projects and if she was willing to start others. She’d gone through about six of them when her laptop made a weird little chirp. At first she ignored it. The chirp happened again. This time a small square popped up in the bottom corner of her screen. The pop-up was from her Skype program, telling her someone was trying to call in. She opened it up and Sharon smiled at her from a thousand miles away.
“Good morning.” Sharon’s perfect pixie cut had gone from coal black to silver in the years Danielle had worked for her, but her tailored suits and perfect posture hadn’t changed.
“Abbie and I were just starting the year off with a friendly meeting,” Sharon said. “She said she could tell you were online because you were on Facebook.”
Damn. “I wasn’t, I mean, yeah, I guess I opened Facebook.” Danielle hunched down to limit Sharon’s view to a head shot. Underneath Ryan’s old sweatshirt she was naked except for a pair of thong panties, a look he appreciated but which wasn’t the best ensemble for work.
Abbie, another assistant manager, stuck her head into the screen. “Happy New Year!”
“Yeah, same to you guys.” The shower stopped.
“Listen,” Sharon said. “I know you’re really busy with the house and all, but I just wanted to see where things stood with the insulin guidelines.”
Danielle brushed a floppy strand of hair out of her eyes with a mental message to Ryan to stay upstairs. “Insulin guidelines? I don’t remember…”
“I thought you were taking that on.” Abbie claimed the screen again. “We talked about it at that meeting right before Halloween.”
Danielle scrambled for an answer. Halloween might as well have been back in college. Over the last couple weeks, she’d paid less and less attention to work.
Because she was on leave. Trying to get the house ready to sell. And oh yeah, Ryan.
Periodic floor squeaks cued Danielle that Ryan was moving around upstairs and she had to hope he stayed there. It’s not that she didn’t want her colleagues to meet him, just not at seven in the morning when she was half naked.
Danielle still hadn’t come up with a response to Abbie when Sharon spoke up. “Do you remember telling some of the girls you’d get them feedback on their poster presentation? Their deadline for submitting it is next week.”
“Oh, shit.” She scratched at her hair again, embarrassed to have forgotten something that important. With all the pots she had on the stove, she was bound to burn one of them. “I’m really sorry. I meant to get comments to them before the holidays.”
Heavy steps pounded down the stairs. Danielle’s nerves pinged. Half her mind focused on the computer. The other half dropped into panic mode, words crowding in the back of her throat unable to make it past her embarrassment.
On the L.A. end, the meeting continued. Sharon muttered a quick aside to Abbie, then came back to the screen. “It would be awesome if you could get them something this week. Then they’ll have time to tweak it before the deadline.”
Ryan blew into the dining room, laying a kiss on Danielle before she could react. “I smell coffee,” he said, reaching down to cop a feel before stepping away.
“Um, Danielle?” Abbie grinned so hard she all but popped out from the laptop screen.
“What the—” Ryan glanced at the computer.
Danielle came very close to crawling under the table.
Ryan took a big step back toward the kitchen. “I’m just … going to go pour us some coffee.”
“It’s a work thing,” Danielle said to him with a strained pseudo-smile, and while Abbie was laughing, Sharon was definitely not.
“Danielle?” Sharon looked like she wanted to say something more but had no idea what.
“I’m sorry, that’s … uh … Ryan. He’s been working here.”
“He sure has,” Abbie said, and then she cracked up, falling away from the screen.
Sharon took a deep breath, puffing her cheeks out as she exhaled. “We can do this another time.” She gave Danielle a hard look. “I need you back February third, ready to go to work.”
“Of course.” Danielle gulped like a teenager. “I’ll get the comments on the poster presentation done by the end of the week.” She gestured at the piles of paper on the table. “I’ll finish up this other stuff, too.”
“All right. Talk to you later, then,” Sharon said, Abbie still giggling in the background.
The Skype window closed. Danielle stared at her computer desktop for a minute, trying to assimilate what had just happened.
Ryan set two mugs on the table next to her. “Sorry, Princess.”
He didn’t actually sound that sorry.
“Oh shit. Oh shit. Oh shit. Oh shit.” She snatched up a mug, sending a splash of hot coffee onto her thigh. The coffee didn’t burn nearly as hot as the embarrassment racing from her brain to her belly and back again. “Ouch.” She made a fist with the end of her sleeve and scrubbed at the spill. “I can’t believe that just happened.”
His hands were solid and strong and warm on her shoulders, and he pressed a kiss onto the top of her head. “What?”
“They saw you. Sharon. My boss. Abbie.” She set the coffee back down and rocked her head back against his belly, an unholy trio of shock, surprise, and embarrassment taking potshots at her pride.
“So?”
“You kissed me.”
Ryan ran his thumbs up the back of her neck. “Again, so?”
“It’s just…” She pulled up one of his hands to nip his knuckle. What was the problem, exactly? “I’m wearing a thong and I smell like sex and Abbie, at least, jumped right on that.”
“Well, they couldn’t smell you and I’ma guess they couldn’t see your bare ass, or things would have been over before I showed up.” He pinched her cheek and reached over her shoulder for a mug. “And what the hell were they bugging you this early for, anyway?” He brought the coffee to his lips, then flinched and moved it away. “You’re on leave.”
“Honestly?” She blew at the steam rising from her mug, mortification fading to an awkward pang. “If I left things until I got back, I’d have to work eighty-hour weeks for months. It’s just easier to keep some of it going.”
“What the hell kind of job have you got?”
“Good question.” Danielle took a cautious sip. “Very good question.”
“Yeah, well, I’m going to go to work before your boss turns up again.” Ryan’s dimple disappeared and the shields went up in his eyes. “Don’t want her to think you’re sleazing around.”
“What?”
He almost said something but gave her a quick kiss instead, his freshly showered Irish Spring scent catching her breath, his cool expression adding to her irritation.
Fine. Be a dick, then. She grabbed her notebook with both hands and showed him her to-do list. “There’s enough here for me to work fulltime from now until I fly back to L.A.”
Ryan raised his hands, palms toward her. “Sounds like bullshit to me, but it’s your gig.”
Danielle clamped her mo
lars together. She didn’t owe Ryan an explanation, why the combination of Sharon’s persuasion and Braden’s approval had cornered her into a manager’s position in the first place; how deftly playing unit politics had turned her into Sharon’s eyes and ears and spunky right hand; how keeping herself too busy to think had helped her cope.
“I didn’t used to think so.” She dropped the notebook next to the laptop. “Now I don’t know.”
Ryan’s expression warmed up some. He came over and brushed his knuckles across her cheek. “You’ll figure it out, Princess.”
She cupped his hand, holding it against her face. “Thanks.”
“I’ll be back after work.”
“Hopefully I’ll have made some progress by then.” On something besides NICU work.
Danielle was pretty sure Sharon’s attempts to keep her working violated all kinds of HR policies, and for possibly the first time ever, Danielle wanted to push back. Management had never been a career goal until she got involved with Braden. He’d hated having her work night shift, and no one would fault her for taking a day job, especially if it made her partner happy.
Would they?
She’d never been the kind of woman who made decisions to keep a man happy. Right? Because otherwise, she was in trouble. God only knew what she’d do for Ryan.
“Are you going to the gym?” Niall asked from his seat at the dining room table.
Ryan loaded one last glass in the dishwasher and closed the door, giving it a hard shove to make it latch. “Shit. Forgot soap.”
Niall got up and brought an empty coffee mug to the sink. “Stick this in there, too.”
Ryan snorted but grabbed the cup, reaching under the sink for the box of dishwasher detergent. He kept his eyes – and his mind – on the task, ignoring where his brother’s expression was headed. He’d worked hard all week, and didn’t have the patience for a lecture. “Before I start this thing up, do you see any more dishes?”